


Wind

by stardustsroses



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Oneshot, sorry for the pain ya'll, the one where i cried 100x
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 18:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16225280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustsroses/pseuds/stardustsroses
Summary: He thought he heard her come in.But it was just the wind.





	Wind

He thought he’d heard her come in.  
But it was just the wind.  
Still, he turned in his chair, made himself look towards the window, and then rubbed his eyes. Exhaustion had taken over his body. He’d fallen asleep, in the midst of all his papers and numbers and names. And yet he felt as if he could feel her warmth in the room, which was absolutely ridiculous. It was dead winter. The room was ice cold.  
“Kaz.”  
Practice made it easier to stay still in his chair and not jump when her voice reached his ears. His first instinct was to look towards the window again - the lock was still in place. There were no footprints of snow on the dark wooden floor.  
And yet there she stood, close to his bed, taking off her winter gloves.  
“Wraith,” he drawled.  
He’d once told her never to sneak up on him again. He’d warned her, dead serious. But Inej had always ignored him, and made it her goal to surprise him like this whenever she got the chance. Just to spite him. Over the years, Kaz had grown to like the little jolt his heart gave whenever she managed to really startle him.  
Her presence was calming. He felt like he could keep sleeping.  
“A bird told me I would have waffles waiting for me tonight,” she said to him, walking over, resting her hip against his desk.  
So close, he could feel her warmth now. He hadn’t imagined it. She was here.  
“Is there any chance that bird was a crow, Wraith?”  
“He was most definitely a crow.”  
“Then you shouldn’t have taken his word for it.”  
“Why not?” She asked.  
He paused. Smiled. “I thought I told you not to trust crows.”  
A smile from her. He felt his heart racing. “I trust this one.”  
“Will you stay?”  
Inej smiled. “Yes.”  
He knew it for the lie that it was, but said nothing.  
She sat at his desk, waiting for something. Looking down at him, as if daring him to come closer.  
He did.  
Easy as breathing, stepping between her legs.  
Calm as warm waters, as he dragged his hands upwards, on her thighs. Making his way to her waist.  
Warm as a summer morning, as Inej placed her own hands on either side of his face. Gentle thumbs caressing away his nightmares. Loving smiles to brighten the darkest of his nights.  
“Are you going to kiss me now?” She whispered. The words sent a shiver down his spine.  
He didn’t wait this time. He wanted to taste her.  
Gentle, so gentle, like it always started. And far from how it ended.  
He touched his lips to hers in a feather-like brush, eyes opening just slightly to see her reaction. He felt her breathe so slowly against him, felt her eyelashes flutter against his cheekbones, felt the warmth of her so, so impossibly close to him that Kaz could only think, could only dream and picture of pulling her closer and never let go of that delightful warmth ever again.  
Inej’s foot briefly brushed over the side of his leg, and it was enough to remind him how close he truly was to her. So close he could feel her breath fanning over his lips. So close he could smell the scent of soap in her hair, the scent of her skin so sweet he wanted nothing else but to lean in and taste other parts of her - the shell of her ear, her jawline, her neck.  
“This is it,” he murmured to himself.  
Inej hitched her chin up slightly, a smile on her lips. When she spoke, her lips brushed his, only briefly. “What is?”  
He could feel the curve of her waist underneath his hand. The muscles of the inner part of her legs on his waist. He could feel so much.  
“Happiness I could have had,” he whispered.  
Inej chuckled then, happy, joyous, so real. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him impossibly close. His face buried between her neck and shoulder, he felt her hair tickling his cheeks, his lips. Kaz let his mouth trail over the curve of her neck, his hand pulling her long hair over her shoulder. He was surprised to see it loose. Inej rarely wore it like this.  
“You have always talked like that,” she said to him, lowly, her breath against his ear.  
“Like what?” Breathless. He felt breathless.  
“Like you’re afraid Kaz,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”  
It was a lie, and he knew it. But he let her say it anyway. Because for those brief moments that never lasted, Kaz was comforted by that idea. That it was real, and that the fear was gone, and that he wasn’t truly alone. That he could finally touch, feel and see her and not drown in a wave of ice water. Finally. Finally.  
He pulled back to look at her. He wanted to see her.  
Rosy cheeks greeted him. Saints. He would kiss her all over.  
“You can have that happiness now,” she whispered, so softly. “It’s never too late.”  
Without letting him respond, Inej tipped his head down. Her lips tasted like the first glass of water after you’ve been thirsty for hours on end. Like the first day of spring - sweet, gentle. She tasted like dreams.  
He was shaking without meaning too, angry, furious, without meaning too.   
Kaz tangled his fingers in her hair, pulling her closer still. He kissed her like he always imagined kissing her, opening her mouth with his and feeling her small gasp against his mouth. The way he’d imagined most nights, lying in bed on his own or next to her, her body far away, out of reach.   
Inej clung to him, kissing him just as desperately, as if they were truly running out of time and could not fit that much love into just a single escaping moment. She responded in kind, hands folding around the lapels of his coat, slipping inside. He’d expected her hands to be cold.  
He’d expected her to be cold.  
But no - her hands, as they dragged over the fabric of his shirt, were as warm as her lips. Again, and again, she kissed him, until Kaz could no longer remember his own name, what he had done, what had happened to them. She kissed him until he could no longer think clearly, could no longer doubt himself and that she was here, she was here with him and finally, finally, he was close to her.   
He remembered late nights lying next to her.  
He remembered the feel of her hands wrapping around his own, her fingers trailing over his, committing every scar and every battle fought and lost and won to memory.   
He remembered the smile she gave him afterwards, when he hadn’t pulled away, when she hadn’t pulled away.  
He remembered nights when all he wanted to do was watch her.  
Inej talked, and talked, and talked. About life, about her family, about the seas. And he’d watched her. He’d promised himself she would have anything and everything she had always wanted. He’d promised himself that if he could give the world to her - he would. And if he couldn’t, Kaz would find a way to do it.  
Moments with her that never slipped his memory. Always and forever guarded on his mind, painful for him to visit, painful for him to reject whenever they knocked unexpectedly and uninvited at his door. Moments gone and passed.  
He kissed her again. For all those moments gone and passed.  
He kissed her once, and twice, and a third time because time was a terrible, terrible thing that slipped through his fingers like sand, and could never, would never stay still for him and for her. Time was a hurricane intent on destroying every good thing. Time was the healer of wounds, they all said to him once. But they never told him that time was also the maker of wounds. Time stabbed at the open holes in his skin, over and over and over, until he was bleeding and couldn’t stop, until he was drowning - not in freezing waters, not in delusional fevers, but in moments and memories.  
Gone and passed. Gone and passed.  
He thought he’d die when Inej gently pulled away from him. His head hung low, his breathing unsteady, his heart unsteadier. His mind shattered.  
He knew she was watching him, waiting, like she always did. Giving him time. Giving him the space to gather himself.  
But he had nothing left of himself to gather.  
“You’re angry,” she murmured, shocked at her own realization.  
He shook his head, attempting to deny it to himself-  
But he was. He was angry. He was furious at himself and the world and-  
And her.  
Inej’s hand cupped his cheek. He only realized he was crying when her thumb wiped at his eye. Angry tears, vile tears. Tears he promised he wouldn’t shed.  
“Will you ever forgive me, Kaz?”  
He didn’t know if he ever could.  
He didn’t know who he was angrier at. Her - or himself, for allowing himself to resent her in the first place.  
“I knew the risks, Kaz,” she murmured to him. “I knew the risks. I took them anyway.”  
“Stop-”  
“I am not afraid, Kaz,” Inej said. “I’m safe.”  
She held him when his head fell on her shoulder. She held him when he screamed, at the top of his lungs, when he asked why and why and why. She held him, kissed him, told them it was going to be alright. A mother’s words, ones he must’ve heard long, long ago, but no longer remembered.   
“Pain only exists if we allow it to be born,” she whispered to him, her cheek against his. “It lives within us, and we cannot destroy it. But we can turn it into something else, Kaz.”  
She cupped his face, made him look up at her. In her eyes, he once more reminded of everything he’d lost.   
“Nothing is every truly lost,” she said to him, leaning in. A kiss on his cheek. Her lips glistened with his tears. A kiss on his other cheek, as cruel as it was loving, that Inej let linger.   
“I love you.”  
The words he had never gotten to say.  
The words time had taken from him, from her, from them.  
Words that could have changed things. Many things, impossible things.  
“I love you,” he said again, weak and fragile and pathetic, and everything he’d taught himself not to be. But Inej had always known, he knew it. Inej had always seen this side of him. She, alone, had seen what was beneath the boy who had been wronged and tricked and killed. He whispered the words to her once more, “I love you.”  
“I love you, too, Kaz,” she said, with all the tenderness left in their world.  
“I should have said it. I should have said it to you,” he choked on the words.   
“Spoken words mean less than true actions, Kaz,” she said. “I know your heart. I know your love. I loved you when I first looked at you. I loved you in the waters and in the sun. There is no difference, my love. The worst and the best - I loved it all, when it came to you.” A pause, and Inej’s smile faltered. “There was a time when I wished for more moments too, Kaz. Moments with you. Whenever you held me, whenever you took my hand, whenever you looked at me. I craved it. I hungered for it more each day. But life isn’t always our friend. Sometimes it makes an enemy out of us. And we can’t prevent it, Kaz. As much as we want to. We can’t.”  
“I wanted to give you more. I wanted to give you everything.”  
“You have, Kaz,” she said, and leaned down once more to kiss him between his brows. Inej looked down at him, and the sadness he saw in her eyes broke whatever was left of him into pieces. “You have given me more than I ever thought possible. You granted me freedom, you granted me happiness. And most of all, you gave me love in a time when I didn’t believe it could exist.” She rested her forehead to his. Whispered, “Those were the greatest gifts of all, my love.”  
They stayed like that, and Kaz begged the gods he didn’t believe in, the saints he’d once mocked, to let her stay with him. To let him see her for the rest of his miserable life. He begged, begged, and begged some more. He prayed to them all.  
“Why did you have to go that day,” he whispered to her, the words painful to his heart. Each one a jab to his spine.   
“I knew the day I set sail I was not going to come back, Kaz,” she said. “I knew it then, as strange as it might seem.”  
“Then why. Tell me why,” Kaz pleaded.  
The smile she gave him was so familiar, Kaz had the sense he was visiting another moment, one that belonged in a past he’d longed to forget, a very long time ago. As with the words she said, “Fate has plans for us all.”  
“Fate led you to drown in the middle of the seas.”  
She opened her eyes, looked into his. The anger in those words didn’t faze her, didn’t scare her. Inej’s eyes turned sad, so incredibly sad, and her arms only tightened around his shoulders, refusing to let him go, like he was refusing to let her go.  
When she spoke, her voice cracked at the edges. “We are all born with a handful of coins to spend, Kaz. Some people consider themselves lucky, for having more than others. Some curse the world for not having enough. Some don’t know what to do with those coins.” Her hand came to caress the side of his head, fingers tangling in the longer part of his hair. She murmured, “I spent all my coins, Kaz.”  
Silence.  
He stared at her, she stared at her own hand at the side of his head. Her lips were still red, her cheeks still tinted pink, her eyes bright. She was supposed to be cold. But she was not. He could almost believe the lie. He almost did.  
Her eyes met his. She was a fleeting wind, a handful of sand, slipping past him.  
Inej said, “They were coins well spent,” another small, sad smile. “Because I, and I alone, can say that I did not just live – I survived. I conquered. I did it all, Kaz. I did it all with you,” she touched her lips to his nose, their brows together. “And you – you were the most wonderful thing of all. Do you know why?”  
He couldn’t speak.  
Inej continued, “They say you can only have one true love in one lifetime. I don’t know if they were right. But that love is supposed to be the one thing that never truly leaves you. That love, Kaz, is never selfish, and always kind. That love leaves your lungs struggling for air. It keeps you from wanting anything else, from needing anything else. That love is the purest one of all, because it leaves no space for hatred or evil or doubt. And that,” she kissed him, just once, just briefly, a brush of her lips against his, “is the love you gave me.”  
“I have no regrets, Kaz,” she said. “I have no hatred in my heart, none at all. I don’t blame the seas and I don’t curse the world and I don’t hate the saints. My heart carried me to the sea, and I had to follow it. I wanted time for us, yes. I wanted you, and me in your arms like this for as long as our coins ran out. But this,” she murmured, gesturing between us, “this will not be erased – not by time, not by forgetfulness, not by disease, and not by death.”  
“When the time comes, I hope you love, Kaz. I hope you love blindly and wildly, like I loved you. I hope that you forgive yourself and forgive me. I hope you remember me without pain, someday. And I wish you happiness, most of all, my love. Happiness above everything else. Saints know that you deserve it.”  
“Inej.”  
“It is never too late, Kaz. Remember that.”  
“Let me say it again,” he said to her, a desperate man hopelessly clinging to a dream. “Let me say it just once more.”  
She smiled – a dream’s smile, a smile she would’ve reserved for him, had he’d been given the time to prove he deserved it.   
“I love you,” he said, clinging to her a little while longer. “Still in death I will love you. Treasure of my heart.”  
They held on a little bit tighter, for a little bit more.   
“Thank you, Inej,” he told her. One last thing he needed to tell her. For everything. For the fights, for the jobs, for the missions, for the unconditional love, for the hand she held out to him when he was drowning. “I’m sorry.” And an apology – an apology for everything he had to apologize for, and for not being there to pull her out of the water.  
“Thank you, Kaz.”  
He knew what those words meant to her. What that thank you meant. Freedom and love. Happiness. However brief it was.  
“Will you stay?”  
Inej smiled. “Yes.”  
He knew it for the lie that it was.   
But Kaz didn’t say it.  
He wouldn’t say it.  
One day, maybe, he would say goodbye. But for now – for now, he wasn’t going to say it.  
“Rest your heart, Kaz,” she kissed him, a kiss that lasted a lifetime, a kiss for the life they lived and the one that they could have had. “Rest your heart now.”  
The ceiling of his bedroom was chipped, the wood weak, ready to give out, letting in the cold. Kaz fixed his eyes on it when he woke, watched the black sky above him through that tiny, insignificant gap that froze his veins. He heard the storm outside, loud and unforgiving, banging open windows and shattering glasses.  
He would have to mend that ceiling someday.  
But for now – for now, he couldn’t mend it just yet.   
Someday. Someday it would mend. He believed that. She had made him believe that.  
Kaz wiped the sleep from his eyes, his heart light. He then led his fingers to his lips, traced the places where she’d been, in his dreams. He tipped his head back, closed his eyes. As if he could still feel her, smell her, taste her.  
“Treasure,” he murmured to no one and to nothing. “I love you.”  
A gentle caress at his cheek. So soft it could have been a breeze grazing his skin. Kaz looked to the window.  
He thought he’d felt her come in.  
It had been the wind.


End file.
